Articles by Nicolás Valencia

This December, we at ArchDaily take a moment to review what happened during the past year — you have already seen posts with the best architecture projects, the best books, the best articles and much more. Now it’s time to review the most bookmarked projects by our readers all over the world on MyArchDaily.

Does it make sense to design green parks in desert cities such as Casablanca, Dubai, or Lima? Ostensibly it does, because they contribute freshness and greenness to the urban environment. In exchange, however, they disrupt native local ecosystems, incur high maintenance bills, and begin a constant struggle to ensure water availability.

2019 has been a very fruitful year in architecture, unveiling projects, discourses, and careers that cover most of the multiple layers, interest, and fields related to this discipline, and highlighting how relevant it has become to our societies —from the Pritzker Prize 2019 awarded to Japanese architect Arata Isozaki to the revealed theme of the Venice Biennale 2020. Take a look at the main architectural milestones of this year across the globe.

Regardless of where you live or work or who you’re friends with, you usually move around the same neighbourhoods and streets of your city. It may be London, Santiago, Shanghai, or Moscow, but in any of these places, there are always districts you have never set a foot in. Have you ever considered how many ‘cities’ are within your own city?

This article was originally published in ArchDaily en Español last October 30, twelve days after the social crisis in Chile escalated. Some ideas of the analysis may feel outdated since some structural reforms were recently announced, but the author decided to keep the original spirit of the piece.

A 4 cent fair increase for the Metro in Santiago sparked mass fare-dodging protests in Chile starting on October 6. Alongside spontaneous street demonstrations, the protests spilled into widespread violence across Santiago during the following days until October 18. That day, the Metro network collapsed, the riots multiplied across the city, and looting and fires were out of control. That night, President Sebastian Piñera declared a state of emergency.

As architects, curators and readers we are always interested in knowing and disseminating the latest trends in architecture, healing the best of architecture around the world and chatting and meeting those who build our cities in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese. However, as much as we try, we will always be ignoring something. In that sense, our only certainty is that the more we know, the more we will ignore.

In Asunción (Paraguay), the XI Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism Biennial (XI BIAU) have presented the winners of the Panorama de Obras section (Projects Panorama) of this contest edition, “all faithful to the spirit of the XI BIAU: living, the inhabitant,” according to the organization.

The Truman Show is a 1998 dramedy starring Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, the unwitting star of a 24-hour reality show that began at his birth. Set in Seahaven, a city-scale television studio designed to covertly record Truman’s entire life, the show attempts to divert Truman from any potential suspicion that every single person he meets is an actor or actress.

Accessibility is often approached as a field related to disability, whether physical or mental. When it comes to architectural design, it always comes up as a peripheral consideration of the project and not as something fundamental. However, there are other barriers.

Everyone wants to travel the world, whether it’s to meet new people, taste new food, or visit new places. Travel is consequently an extremely lucrative industry, but tourist destinations are getting more crowded than ever and associated pollution emissions are only worsening the climate emergency.